1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an apparatus for the preparation of dough portions for baking.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Portions of dough, e.g. to produce bread rolls or the like, are conventionally placed by a so-called head machine into elongated pans for the first rising stage. These pans have five or more trough-like depressions to receive the portions of dough. The pans are customarily attached at their ends to two parallel transport chains, by a joint-like connection (allowing rotation about the long axis). The transport chains are uniformly driven forward and around comers by chain wheels. By arranging many pans in series, the dough can be passed through a first-rising cabinet at the desired rate of portions per hour. The time spent in the first-rising cabinet, which depends on the individual process, then determines the required machine volume.
After the first rising, the dough portions proceed to a shaping station, where a descending plunger indents them and simultaneously presses them into the trough-like depressions in the first-rising pans, giving the dough its specified shape. Immediately thereafter, in a mining station, the shaped dough portions are turned out onto flat carriers turning or onto a conveyor belt, where they rest with indented surface down and are taken to a separate room for the final rising process. After the final rising, the dough portions are again turned over by 180.degree. and simultaneously set onto baking sheets, on which they are then carried into an oven. Because the first-rising pans are fixedly suspended from transport chains, which must be moved back and forth several times in the first-rising cabinet in order to remain there for the required time, e.g. about 8 minutes, while ensuring the desired throughput, the machine volume is necessarily large, with dead spaces and high assembly costs. Furthermore, the first-rising pans are ordinarily not removable, which makes cleaning them difficult and hygienically unsatisfactory.
In addition, because the first-rising pans are eventually moistened by the dough and if they are not removable, the whole installation must be shut down from time to time so that it can dry out. This means that the throughput claimed in the manufacturer's specifications is usually not achieved in practice. To avoid such inactive periods, the dough is customarily kept dry by chemical additives. This method is obviously not very acceptable.
Yet another problem with the conventional equipment is that after the final rising, which takes about 20 minutes, a laborious manual process is required to transfer the dough from the carriers to the baking sheets.
A baking and drying oven has been disclosed (DE-PS 549 132) in which baking pans that can be moved upward and downward and stacked up are transferred one after another through a rising area, a preliminary baking area and a final baking area. Each baking pan is pushed into the oven through an opening so as to occupy the lowest position in an upwardly moving stack of pans. The stack is raised in steps, after each of which the uppermost pan in the upwardly moving stack is pushed back onto a downwardly moving stack of baking pans, and the bottom pan in this stack is removed from the final baking area.
A baking and drying oven of this kind is not suitable for both the first and the final rising stages of baked goods and ordinarily requires the previous use of a separate apparatus in which the first rising occurs. The baking pans correspond to the baking sheets, which are manually introduced into the oven and must likewise be manually removed.
The patent DE-OS 22 49 381 discloses an automatic warming chamber in which a plurality of carriers are filled by hand, at an input site, with a plurality of rolls of dough. The filled carriers are subsequently arranged in a first stack. Stacks placed side by side are advanced toward a delivery unit by means of a horizontal displacement device, one stack-width at a time. The last stack is taken apart in a stepwise manner by means of a delivery apparatus, and at a delivery opening the fully risen rolls of dough are removed by hand. Prior to delivery the rolls of dough are indented by a human operator in a booth. The emptied carriers can then be sent back to the input site by way of a return conveyor, being dried and cleaned by appropriate devices on the way, so that the baking pans travel along a closed circuit.
Apparatus of this kind provides no opportunity for a first rising, nor can the baked goods be either turned over or shaped between first and final rising stages.